Velan received the heroic textcomm just moments after he had leapt from the alien vessel, heading towards the welcoming hull of the human ship he had ordered to rescue his crew; he couldn't turn back, even if he wanted to. Unable to stop Jilszen from committing his heroic deed, and unwilling to do so, as his heroic maneuver would save many more lives, Velan simply dispatched his heartfelt thanks to all his soldiers who were sacrificing themselves, while he simultaneously contacted the Nemesis and instructed it to contribute to rescue operations across the system however it could. As he glided through the debris-filled void, barely-visible shards of metal bouncing off of his armored torso like somber, deathly rain, Velan glanced back at the sporadic stream of soldiers trailing behind him, and at the waning firefight visible on the alien ship beyond. To see such proud soldiers reduced to mentally shattered survivors — or worse, barely recognizable corpses — was a travesty, especially when so many had been a part of his beloved crew. In that moment, Velan swore on everything that mattered to him — his homeworld, his life, his species — to avenge the deaths of so many of his people, even though he suspected that when he was battling such a terrible foe, the scores would always be uneven.
Behind those evacuating, with his genetically-enhanced vision, Velan eyed Korthekar, his weapons not ceasing operation for an instant as he fought, providing invaluable support for the evacuation effort. Only once the last of the Nemesis's marines — not counting the doomed rear-guard — had made it through the breach, did Korthekar hurl a total of eight grenades into the alien horde before him, bolstering Jilszen's efforts, while further delaying the alien assault long enough for himself to escape the doomed ship. Velan knew that it must have been a terrible thing for Korthekar to leave his own soldiers, and his second-in-command, behind, effectively condemning them to death; in that moment, a grudge had been forged between Velan's marine officer and the aliens that would not be resolved until one of the two was dead. What remained of Velan's crew held the same grudge, and indeed, the same could be said for the rest of humanity; whatever was to happen in the coming war, Velan was certain that there would be no mercy, as there had been none over Light's End. In that precise moment, a blow from an alien fiend crushed Jilszen into gore, and a swarm of smaller aliens began shredding through whatever defenders remained.
Velan then tore his eyes away from the alien ship, and his doomed soldiers aboard it, not because he was too horrified to watch, and not out of lack of respect for Jilszen and his soldiers, but because he was mere seconds away from colliding violently with the rescue ship he had summoned. This was a ship named the "Poseidon," a moderately sized frigate and not too dissimilar from Velan's own craft, save that it was less modernized, less well-managed, and had suffered more damage during the most recent battle. Dispatching a textcomm to Xandra asking her to dock the Nemesis with the vessel so that Velan's remaining crew members could make their way back to their own warship, Velan clambered into the nearest open airlock, and, once it had pressurized, he, still dripping alien blood and biofluid, walked out into the relatively calm interior of the human-controlled ship. The air, filled with hasty, panicked discussion, was still more conducive to thought than an ambience filled with chilling silence, or, even worse, gunfire — as a result, Velan actually began to calm down. As he briefly reviewed the status of other boarding actions, however, this sense of calm disappeared; Velan discovered to his horror that most other boarding actions had suffered similarly to his own, and hundreds of thousands of marines had been slain across the fleet. Though many more humans had been murdered that day by the alien monstrosities, this additional transgression only compounded the grief and rage felt by many across the fleet — and, once word inevitably got out, by many across the Empire.
Velan, stumbling through the halls of his host vessel, a grim-faced Yelazar in tow, soon ran into Terxah and Falmenec, both of whom were futilely attempting to remove gore, both human and alien, from their own armored suits. As he approached the pair, Velan heard Falmenec remark, "This ship has potentially the worst contamination avoidance I've ever seen! Half of the crew are traipsing through the halls, spreading an unidentified alien liquid through the ship as they do so, and no one even bats an eye. This is insanity!"
"I completely agree — this is less than professional. Or safe, for that matter." Terxah replied.
Velan, seeing the opportunity, inserted himself into the conversation.
"Honestly, before boarding that ship I would have said that a bit of alien water couldn't possibly do that much harm," Velan hastened to say, "though now I have no choice but to concede that you're right. Whatever protocols you think we should enforce when we return, Falmenec, I'll have them enforced."
Both of his officers turned to face him; Velan added, "Most of our crew members are loitering by the airlocks here — I'll order the Nemesis to dock along this half of the ship and command the remaining crew to gather here so that we may return to our own vessel as soon as is possible."
"A wise choice," spoke Falmenec, who added, quietly, "I also thought I should tell you — I acquired some samples during our involuntary expedition that may prove useful in helping us eventually beat these things, and I'd love an opportunity to study these samples from within the confines of my own laboratory, if you don't disagree."
Velan shot a piercing glare at his chief scientist, who faltered under his captain's gaze.
"Unless you prove to me that those things are safe within an hour after we board, they're going to be shot out the airlock while we're Remnant-bound. I was just on a ship where the floor was an enemy — I don't trust that your 'samples' aren't dangerous either."
As the conversation progressed, more and more of Velan's crew members arrived at their designated rallying point within the host warship — no doubt all who remained would be accounted for within a few minutes.
Falmenec opened his mouth to speak, but the void in conversation was filled instead by Dentor, who, bottle of 99% in hand, appeared with a host of other crew members and said, "We just survived humanity's first encounter with a genocidal alien species, our fleet has been met with crippling losses, and we've all lost valued friends and fellow soldiers; why do I not see drinks in your hands?"
It was, admittedly, a good question — Velan was about to answer by saying, "We haven't yet left the system and we aren't yet on our own ship; intoxicating ourselves before we're truly safe is a great way to get ourselves killed" — but, yet again, just as Velan was about to speak, he was interrupted by the arrival of another one of his senior officers. Korthekar, drenched in the blood of aliens from the chest down, while his helmet was smeared bright-red with the blood of humanity, lumbered towards the awed party, glowered at Velan, and stated, "The next time we meet those aliens, let me fight them for longer."
While Korthekar's words choked whatever conversation and mood had existed before to death, Korthekar walked past the intimidated crowd to loiter — and sulk — menacingly, wherever his hulking form would best fit. Velan, unlike most, understood the titan's pain: Korthekar had witnessed death on a scale that was unprecedented in his life, and indeed in recent history; he had lost many of his own soldiers, and even one of his closest lieutenants, all in less than two hours. Such awful casualties, under such terrible circumstances, could not be easy to endure — even for a bloodthirsty, MECS-drugged man of war. Despite his insect-like appearance, and his unnatural physical strength, Korthekar still had a human mind, with all its emotional trappings; this was one of all soldiers' greatest weaknesses, one that the genetic engineers of the Empire had been unwilling to "solve."
The next moment, the hull of the Poseidon began to whine and strain as it docked with the similarly-sized Nemesis, while a rush of air signified that the atmospheres of the two vessels were being equalized, a process that Velan knew took roughly five minutes for two ships of this size. If he were to attempt to board his vessel immediately, without waiting for pressurization, Velan stood a chance of rupturing the docking tubes between the two ships as well as wreaking havoc with the occupants of both ships; despite the impatience of the battle-weary Velan, who wanted nothing more than to be safely back on his own ship, he would have to wait.
Glancing towards a quintet of officers in conversation, Velan intended to pass the time and distract his grief-wracked mind via a tried and true method practiced since before humans had achieved even rudimentary spaceflight: listening in on the affairs of others. After a few moments of unwarranted observation, and accompanying deep thought, Velan's pseudo-meditation was abruptly and alarmingly interrupted; falling upon his ears, chilling his blood and making him subtly shiver with fear, a chorus of screams — both human, and alien — could be heard, echoing throughout the war-weary halls of the Poseidon, on which he was trapped. That very moment, Velan's head was once again bombarded with seemingly endless textcomms from now-embattled ships, and, as he poured through them all, one of the five officers he had been observing spontaneously sprouted another, alien limb; screeching deafeningly at the top of their inhuman lungs, the 'officer' then impaled one of the people they had been talking to through the skull with a singular movement. This confirmed what the panicking fleet's textcomms now suggested: that the aliens encountered during the boarding had found a way to mimic the appearance and mannerisms of humans themselves, becoming frighteningly effective and undeniably lethal infiltrators. The human-like alien in front of Velan then tossed the carcass of its late conversation partner aside without a hint of emotion or remorse, before pivoting and slashing another human in half before they could even grasp their sidearm; an instant passed, and the alien had disembowelled the second-to-last human with a single elegant spinning motion. Four humans had been killed in seconds. The alien then turned its attention on the other, utterly terrified officer, who was fumbling behind themselves hysterically as they sought their sidearm, yet were too terrified to look away from the monster before them.
The once human-looking alien's body had been transforming throughout the fight, but only now did it begin to warp, contort, disintegrate and re-form, making visceral, blood-curdling sounds as it did so, until most of the creature resembled an alien of moderate size. Velan had no desire to see the creature finish its horrid transition: raising his rifle, Velan unloaded half of the weapon's magazine into the partly-transformed alien infiltrator, reducing it to a bloodied husk and providing the copious human blood on the ground some alien company, while saving the life of the remaining officer in the process. Sensing that yet another fight for their lives was forthcoming, Velan ordered his remaining crew members and marines began to establish a perimeter, closing their ranks so as to concentrate their firepower against a foe that, at least on the human ship, seemed entirely uninterested in shooting back; the alien infiltrators could not bring alien guns aboard, and human ones seemed too weak for their taste. While his crew formed into their formation, the first rank kneeling to allow those behind them to fire in a truly archaic fashion, the rescued officer, soaked in both human and alien blood, dashed from her precarious position to Velan's own. Seeing no reason to deny her safety, and knowing that doing otherwise would condemn her to death, Velan ordered his formation to part so as to let her through. Once she had stumbled behind Velan's perimeter, he walked towards the shocked soldier, who his implants identified as one 'Illtera', a communications officer, and asked, "Do your implants have any MECS left in them?"
Her face marked by a puzzled expression, Illtera replied, "A fair amount, sir."
Velan nodded, "Then use that fair amount of MECS, go over to my perimeter, and prepare to make good use of that sidearm, Illtera."
Before Velan had even finished his sentence, Illtera was overcome by a brief episode of shuddering and minor convulsing, until a few moments later all of this ceased, and the previously shattered Illtera, under the influence of MECS, snapped to attention and replied with steely enthusiasm, "With pleasure, sir!"
Grabbing her sidearm without hesitation, Illtera then sprinted over to the nearest line of soldiers and joined the defence. Velan's position, being inside a tight hallway, was relatively enclosed with only two ways in; this position saw only the occasional alien for three full minutes, with these occasional aliens being torn to shreds by a torrent of coilgun fire the moment they showed their ugly visages, though only a fool would believe that these sporadic, accidental incursions were the real assault. Indeed, it seemed as if the aliens, acting strategically where before they had seemed like nothing but beasts, were avoiding his strongpoint in favor of securing the rest of the Poseidon from its far less-organized defenders. Velan knew his good fortune would not last forever, and he was, yet again, sadly correct: the pain-induced screams, sporadic gunfire, and desperate, unanswerable cries for help that had dominated the halls of the ship were gradually subsided by the haunting screeches or the vicious roars of hundreds of aliens as the Poseidon gradually fell under their control. The human crew was rapidly being driven back to a few stubborn holdouts, or slaughtered entirely; the former was bound to fall under even more vicious attack soon enough, their defenders joining the endless ranks of Light's End's dead heroes. Velan, for his part, was not interested in joining these heroes, and though the rate at which he was becoming isolated did much to worry him, this did nothing to dampen his crew members' spirits — survival was in sight, and so long as it was, they would fight as ferociously as the nightmares they battled. Weapons brandished and in formation, Velan's forces awaited their foe with what could almost be described as eagerness, born out of a desire for bloody retribution, a desire for survival, and a desire to "get on with it." A soldier's second-worst enemy, besides their actual enemy, was waiting.